Annotations Related to Recruitment

Utilizing church records and publications, plus public sources, Swensen examines the reasons for decline of Christian Science focusing on a dominating church leadership valuing conformity and eschewing individual initiative. Also contributing was the development of medical science, bad press, a lack of socializing opportunities among youth, and cloistered members’ reticence to share their faith. Some hope comes in the recent reorientation toward members’ own initiative.

Swensen presents a comprehensive timeline and biography of Augusta Stetson including her adoption of the Christian Science faith, being taught by Mary Baker Eddy, becoming a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, her healing practices, and her founding of, and influential leadership of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City. Stetson’s significance to women’s studies is also appraised.

Armer researched Mary Baker Eddy’s 1881 founding of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College emphasizing her frequently overlooked contribution to adult education. The co-educational institution promoted lifelong learning, continuing education, self-directed learning, and vocational training, and uniquely emphasized entrepreneurship. Many graduates started their own businesses as practitioners of healing through Christian Science treatment, and some would go on to establish 37 institutes of instruction in healing methods.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

Christian Scientists from Chicago would convince a skeptical Mary Baker Eddy to participate in the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions with its message of unity among all religions. Although the address was enthusiastically received, its overall negative impact was the association of Christian Science with theosophy and Vedanta, and the crystalizing of opposition from the more traditional Christian Churches.

Countess Dorothy von Moltke was a devoted Christian Scientist and strong advocate for the German translation of Mary Baker Eddy’s textbook Science and Health. Throughout her life, she worked to make Christian Science more accessible to German-speaking followers by providing English lessons and by serving on the translation committee that ultimately completed the first foreign language translation of Science and Health.

The objective of Armer’s study of Mary Baker Eddy’s establishment of her Massachusetts Metaphysical College is to highlight the achievements of women pioneers in higher education and entrepreneurial successes. Characteristics of Eddy’s business success included taking risk, managerial skills, knowledge of the product and the market, financial resources to produce capital, and enough success to produce profits.

Matsukata’s article, “History of the Church Universal as Unfolded in Tokyo, Japan” is the 20th-century history of Christian Science in Japan, which began with visits by Christian Science lecturers sent from Boston. Traditions were challenging and hostile to the growth of Western and Christian sects at the time. Translations of articles were deemed ineffective because Japanese culture was so alien.

Homan portrays the people, their personal recollections, stories and spiritual healings that make up the history of each Christian Science church and society in Alaska, past and present. The histories also include the introduction of CS into the communities, church construction, and church growth and challenges. An appendix lists the CS churches, societies, practitioners, teachers and nurses going back to the early twentieth century.

Swensen examines the initial flock and organization of the Church Mary Baker Eddy founded and then disbanded ten years later. The early 1880s brought new members and stability, spurring Eddy to organize. But this embattled precursor of today’s Mother Church would be irredeemably challenged by a volatile membership, unreliable preaching by invited clergy, and confusion over competing metaphysical groups.

Nicoletta, professor of architectural history, sees the 1964-1965 World’s Fair reflecting a major shift in the 1960s from modernism to postmodernism. The Christian Science pavilion was a dazzling white structure topped by a translucent pyramid that bathed the interior with light. The natural light, reflecting pool, white color, and symbolic use of the number seven, conveyed the harmony of Christian Science.

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

Swensen analyzes the tension in the Christian Science Church between a desire for community engagement and an exclusive focus on healing works alone. He maintains that the interpretation of Church Bylaws tended to discourage connecting with community, even to the point of distrusting outsiders, making broad appeals self-defeating. Those oriented toward their communities have always been turned down in favor of continued insistence on healing works alone.

​​Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, researches whether the early appeal of Christian Science reached beyond American culture to attract recently arrived immigrants. Most of the immigrants were Europeans, especially British and German, and were of lower to middle working class. Despite language barriers, they found meaning in the church’s fellowship, restored health, and the promise of raising their station in life.

Examining 32 branch church membership records, plus 800 testimonies of healing, between 1890-1910, Swensen provides a demographic history of the occupations, classes, and motivations of Christian Scientists across the country. Compared to the 1910 census, Swensen found five times more professionals in the branches and almost four times the managers/proprietors, but only one fifth the number of unskilled workers and farmers.

Ivey chronicles the late 19th century expansion of both New Thought and Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science church in the Midwest: the graduates of Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College who established institutes in six Midwest cities, the most important early organizers of Christian Science services, the establishment of The Principia as an independent school, and New Thought’s Emma Curtis Hopkins many organizers.

Rolf Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, describes the troubled early stages of the Christian Science movement in Portland under the leadership of two influential women, Blanche Hogue and Amorette Aldrich, and the churches they established. The source of contention appears to have been due to Hogue’s affiliation with and support from Augusta Stetson, a prominent Christian Science practitioner and teacher in New York City.

Swensen documents the long-term effect of Alfred Farlow’s early crusade to protect the growing Christian Science Church from outside attacks, and muzzle an unrestrained and over-zealous faithful. He sees this protective stance as casting a long shadow over the content of future church periodicals, and the reason why members have since shown a deep reticence for personal outreach.

Umansky analyzes the evolution of Rabbi Alfred Moses’s teachings identified as Jewish Science, as found in his two books responding to the early twentieth-century exodus of Jews to Christian Science. His first book specifically contrasts Christian Science with Jewish Science. Seeking a practical faith as a counter to Christian Science, the second book is influenced by both psychology and New Thought.

From his study of six Christian Science West Coast churches between 1880-1915, Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, provides a detailed social profile of particular Christian Scientist leaders, the churches they established, and why they flourished after 1900. The Pacific Coast, with its influx of those seeking a better climate, along with its religious diversity, was fertile ground for Christian Science

Michell examines the influences, and theological connections and differences, between the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins, the 19th-century Woman’s movement, and the New Thought and New Age movements. Hopkins, unlike Eddy, would see Truth in all religions, not limited to Christianity, and focused more on a prosperity gospel.

This collection of brief articles about 14 people who served the Cause of Christian Science during Mary Baker Eddy’s last decades first appeared in a series from The Christian Science Journal between 1987 and 1991. More than imparting interesting historical information, the articles express these individuals’ vital spirit and conviction that moved them to give their all for a Cause.

Christian Science and New Thought both conveyed a “metaphysical perfectionism” in sync with late 19th-century American can-do spirit and the golden glow of California culture with its promises of prosperity. Key women in Christian Science left the movement to become teachers and prime movers of New Thought in California. Other reasons for the decline in both movements today are discussed. 

Gartrell-Mills summarizes her 1991 D.Phil thesis in this article focusing on the historical role of Christian Science in Britain. Although into the early 1990s Christian Science retained “an unobtrusive, yet persistent presence in many British towns and cities,” she found that the organization was “a present day example of a movement largely ossified through the provisions and statutes laid down before 1910 by Mary Baker Eddy.”

Fifty members each from three faith communities in Houston (Catholic Charismatics, Christian Scientists, and Baha’is) were interviewed to learn the types of social ties effective in recruitment and how these interact with the different group ideologies. Of the 50 Christian Scientist interviewees, recruitment happened most often not by proselytizing, but through intimate, personal contact with members where religious identity was revealed.